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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Fight Training Day 1: The Juice Cut Begins...

When Sifu said cut to 205 so I can fight at 185, i sorta freaked out mentally for a bit. The only way I figured that was going to happen is if i went on another protein fast, which meant no MMA training. I love protein fasts for the effect, i hate them for how they feel while you're doing them. Given my day-to-day, there's no way I could sit around in that mental haze for a week or so until my body kicked over and even then, i still figured i would have to be off the mats for at least 4 weeks. So, cut to make fighting weight, but don't fight train for a month while i'm doing it...yeah that makes sense. So he suggested I try a juice cut using something like Odwalla Superfood, you know, something with an abundance of carbs and not too much else. Now, i haven't learned much in the last year, mainly because I'm fat, weak, and overall a shitty student, but I have learned that when Sifu suggests something, you probably should try it, because he's usually not wrong. One day in and it's actually not that bad, of course, I'm comparing that PSMFs, which are freaking brutal the first day or so (and about the next 10 days after). I think i'm also cheating a bit since I'm travelling for the next 4 days and won't actually be training. Also, I wonder what passes for Superfood in the UK...guess I'll find out soon enough.

Yeah! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner of champions...and me for the next couple of weeks

I was thinking about a conversation I had a while back with a co-worker about this idea of warrior culture, warrior mentality, etc. He made some interesting points about how a warrior is someone who plies the trade of war, and that a modern-day warrior is basically a soldier. If you want to be a warrior, he said, go enlist, pick up a gun, and deploy to Iraq. I don't disagree with this, and I do agree that there are alot of folks who train different martial arts and talk about "being a warrior" falsely. In fact, I remember one of the reasons I started training Capoeira back in the day was because on the surface it seemed a bit more holistic than traditional martial arts that were just about fighting. Of course, I learned over the years this wasn't entirely true and that at it's core, Capoeira really is a martial art...which makes me smile everytime i see that stupid NOS commercial. Any Capoeirista worth his salt knows you don't go ito a real fight and do all the flashy shit we do at demos (well, not "we", it's been years since I stepped into a roda), but that's the essence of Capoeira.

Anyway, now I'm starting to ramble a bit, but my point is that while maybe claims of being a "warrior" are a bit overblown, the concept of a martial spirit is something that I think everyone who trains touches on at some point, but I don't think it's just the training. I think back to times when a bunch of us were sitting in someone's living room stripping tires for berimbaus, stringing berimbaus, cutting dead skin off of each others' feet or otherwise patching each other up, to today, sitting on the bench wrapping up before training...These are the experiences that tie us all together regardless of what style we train.

Blah, I'm just waxing all nostalgic and dangerously close to poetic. Better quit before I do something evolved or enlightened...